1st Grade

Mr. Pollock was a painter who lived from 1912 to 1956, ultimately dying in a car crash at the young age of 44. As most of you probably know, Jackson was famous for his "drip paintings." Oftentimes, people exclaim "Well I could've done that!" But the reason Mr. Pollock is famous is because he was a pioneer of the method during a time when people were dabbling more and more into abstract art. He was known for splattering, spraying, squirting, dripping, and pouring paint onto his canvas. He used all sorts of materials to do this such as brushes, sticks, spatulas, spoons, etc. He worked with his canvas on the floor so that he could "dance" around it as he worked. ​

Throughout this project, I made sure to emphasize that our paintings would NOT look like Pollock's. We were just using a few different techniques that might look like something he would do.

On the first day of the project, we GENTLY splatter painted white stars onto a black background. We also looked at rocket ships before drawing one and tracing them with a marker. Lastly, we used tempera cakes to paint our rocket.

The second day of the project, we cut out 4 or 5 different sized circles. We put a dot of glue stick on the back of each circle and placed them onto a large modified picture frame that I had made. I had removed the glass from the frame. Students could then lightly glue their circles down to the back of the picture frame. Then we placed marbles and paint into the frames. The frames were large and required two students to gently roll the marbles around the frame, creating streaks of paint across our circles. These would later become our planets. I also took a picture of each student while they acted like they were floating.

On the final day, we cut out our rocket ship and glued it on. We also glued down our planets onto the background. We cut the picture of ourselves out and glued that down too. So much cutting and gluing this class! Lastly, they used a silver marker to add a tether between their rocket ship and themselves.

Usually I would put student work here, but I don't think I should be posting pictures of students' faces. So this is what the outcome looked like.